This invention relates to tools adapted to releasably support abrasive, polishing or buffing materials (called finishing materials herein) about a cylindrical periphery, and to be rotated to abrade, polish or buff a surface with the supported finishing material.
The prior art is replete with such tools, some of which are adapted to use a circular continuous belt of finishing material. Typically, tools adapted for use with finishing belts have peripheries which can be contracted to allow a belt to be placed around or removed from the periphery, and expanded to hold a belt in place. One such tool described in British Pat. No. 880,818 has a periphery defined by an elastic resilient cellular material which can be manually compressed to put a belt in place and then allowed to expand to hold the belt about its periphery. While such a wheel may provide a desired conformability of the finishing belt to a workpiece, the belts which it uses are expensive compared to equivalent lengths of comparable finishing material, and each such tool of a different diameter requires a separate stock of belts.
Other known prior art tools have been adapted to use less expensive predetermined lengths of finishing material which are attached by engaging one or both of their ends in slots opening through the cylindrical peripheries of the tools. For example, see U.S. Pat. No. 1,907,904, 2,259,685, and 2,725,694; and 2,192,804 which describes such a tool having a rubber outer layer on which the strip is supported. Also U.S. Pat. No. 4,067,149 describes such a tool in which a leading end of a predetermined length of finishing material is inserted in a slot in the periphery of the wheel, and the length of finishing material is removably held in place around the periphery of the wheel by a coating of pressure sensitive adhesive on the finishing material.
While all of these tools may adequately hold a length of finishing material so that it may be applied to a surface, they all support the finishing material on a surface which is so hard that the finishing material cannot effectively conform to a concave or convex surface of a workpiece; and that when the finishing material is abrasive, one of its edges can gouge the workpiece if the axis of the wheel is tipped out of parallel with the surface of the workpiece. Also, many of these tools have a complex means for holding the strip of finishing material that adds substantially to the cost of the tool and to the time needed to attach or replace the strip of finishing material.